


not unlike a practitioner's hand

by Philomytha



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Christmas, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 10:38:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3131501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philomytha/pseuds/Philomytha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter's second Christmas gift for Nightingale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	not unlike a practitioner's hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blind_Bard](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Blind_Bard).



> Written for blind_bard for Fandom Stocking

For the first time, I didn't go back to my parents' flat on Christmas Eve. I told them it was so that they wouldn't have to clear out my bedroom for me, but really it was because it felt weird leaving Nightingale on his own. Last year had been different, last year there had been Lesley and excitement and--well, and a lot less had happened. This year was different. Molly had done her usual thing of trying to rebalance the mood in the Folly, and had gone a bit overboard with Christmas decorations. There were evergreen branches and holly boughs and red ribbons draped from pretty much everything she could find, which in a building the size of the Folly ended up with half a small forest inside. I had no idea where she was getting it all, but from a parallel dimension was rising on my list of possibilities.

I made sure to be down early on Christmas morning. Molly had laid on a ridiculously large spread, and I knew I wouldn't be able to do it justice and still survive Christmas dinner at Aunty Jo's, but I sat down and Molly poured me some coffee. I'd put my M&S suit on this morning. Dad would tease me about it, but I thought my mum would appreciate it, and I knew Nightingale would. I put a small box by his place and waited for him to arrive. Nightingale's posh, and that means he opens Christmas presents in the evening, so there would be proper gifts when I got back from the family. But this was a Christmas morning sort of thing.

He came down a few minutes later, and while the perfect tailoring of his suit showed up mine a bit, the surprise on his face as he saw me was worth it. "Good morning, Peter. Happy Christmas," he said, and took his seat, then looked at the little box. I'd wrapped it properly, with a ribbon and a label and everything, and he picked it up. "Is this for me?"

"It's something you need to experience," I told him.

He looked at the label. '"Lux'," he read aloud, and raised his eyebrows at me. I waited while he untied the ribbon and carefully pulled back the paper. He pulled out the little box and I got the response I'd been secretly hoping for: he laughed.

"A chocolate orange," he said, still smiling, and I knew he was remembering when Lesley and me had been telling him what it was. I'd hesitated a bit over the selection at the Sainsbury's on Southampton Row. I thought Nightingale might really be more the dark chocolate type, and definitely not the milk-with-toffee-bits sort, but in the end I'd decided that tradition was the most important thing and gone for a straightforward classic milk chocolate orange, in the regular blue box. He opened the box and took it out, then began to unwrap the orange-patterned foil before I could stop him.

"You're supposed to hit it against something first," I said, "so that it breaks up into segments. That's the proper way to eat it."

He only smiled and continued to unwrap it, flattening out the foil around it. Then he glanced up at me, and opened his hand, murmuring in Latin as he did so, two spells in quick succession. One was a standard werelight, opening above his hand. The other--the chocolate orange split neatly into its segments, falling in a pretty spiral pattern on the foil. At the same time, the werelight split too, and showered down onto the table in little chocolate-orange-shaped pieces that vanished as they landed.

I watched them fall. "Wow."

He looked away quickly as if embarrassed at this frivolous use of magic, and picked up three segments. The first he gave to Molly, who was still a bit starry-eyed from the magic show and who took the chocolate happily. Then he gave me one, and ate the third himself.

"It's nice," he said, sounding only a little bit surprised. "Thank you, Peter." He folded the other segments back into the foil, without using magic, and nodded to Molly to serve breakfast.

"Happy Christmas, sir," I said, the taste of chocolate and orange lingering in my mouth.


End file.
